UK Woke Watch

Dispatches from a World Going Madder

As America goes, so goes the rest of the world. There's a great deal of truth to that saying, especially now that we live in an era of 24/7 news, where ideas and movements spread faster than the Covid-19 virus. The rise of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, cultural Marxism, and the Woke Revolution have politicized many institutions across the United States, and the contamination has now spread all across the Western world, influencing liberal democracies like Australia, New Zealand, the nations that comprise the European Union, and the UK, where I live.

Wokeness is political correctness gone mad. It's a new secular religion, with "social justice" being its new god and "cancel culture" its military wing. Its despotic, power-seeking leaders aim to make Western institutions jettison conservative mores and lose faith in their own ideals. The defining characteristics of wokeness are arrogance, ignorance, and irrationality in equal measure.

During the summer of 2020, not long after we in the UK started seeing on our TV screens the repugnant footage from the USA of statues being torn down across the country, violent protesters in the city of Bristol, England, toppled a statue of Edward Colston, a prominent seventeenth-century merchant and slave trader who also served in Parliament, and dumped it into Bristol Harbor. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson quickly condemned their actions in a tweet:

People have a right to protest peacefully & while observing social distancing but they have no right to attack the police. These demonstrations have been subverted by thuggery—and they are a betrayal of the cause they purport to serve. Those responsible will be held to account.¹

The events in Bristol triggered the removal, or planned removal,  of several other statues of prominent British men of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries who had connections, even if only tangentially, with the trans-Atlantic slave trade, including those of Robert Milligan, Thomas Guy, and Sir Robert Clayton.² Not content with these removals, the same mob defaced a statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, Westminster, which had to be boarded up by police.³

Marching Through the Institutions

The woke movement has penetrated many of our national institutions in the UK, including universities, the National Trust, the Church of England, the police, the BBC, and the British Army.

Universities: Britain's hallowed educational institutions have become fertile breeding grounds for the woke movement. At Oriel College, Oxford, an angry mob called for the removal of a statue of Cecil Rhodes, insisting that he was a white supremacist, colonialist, and racist. Although Oriel College did agree to take down the statue, the decision was later reversed, owing to the financial cost of undertaking the removal.⁴

But Oxford University represents only the tip of the iceberg. Today, some 90 percent of British universities have restricted free speech, including cancelling invitations to guest speakers because their views have been deemed offensive.⁵ Over the last ­several years this has become such a problem that the UK government had to enact new laws prohibiting this vicious cancel culture, with fines of up to £500,000 being authorized against universities that continue to de-platform people.⁶

The National Trust: In the wake of George Floyd's death, the National Trust sped up the publication of a study commissioned in 2018 that links many of the grand houses under its wing to slavery and colonialism. Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with learning about our colonial past, but when the National Trust insisted that all its volunteers undergo "unconscious bias training," some officials resigned in protest.

The Trust also pushed its employees to wear LGBT rainbow badges and lanyards to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexuality in Britain. Those who conscientiously objected to wearing them were kept from interacting with the public.⁷

The Church:The Church of England seems equally keen to preach the woke gospel. During the Black Lives Matter riots in the USA, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, commissioned a new Church of England guidance⁸ suggesting that artifacts linked to slavery and colonialism should be removed from churches simply because some people might find them "disturbing."

Law Enforcement:In August 2021, UK police departments, to show they are doing their part to "fight social injustice," unveiled a new fleet of cars adorned with the LGBT rainbow. The brightly painted vehicles were received with almost universal scorn, and some commentators called them "Clown Cars" and said they would only encourage more criminals to come out onto the streets. Perhaps the most scathing remark came from Harry Miller, a former police officer and founder of the campaign group Fair Cop. Speaking to the Telegraph, Miller said:

We don't see the Met[ropolitan Police] with special cars for knife crime, even though the number of stabbings in London is appalling. The problem is that the second you see a rainbow car, you know that it is a police force that has made its mind up about some very contentious issues. You no longer see a police car or a police officer who is there to support everyone, from all political persuasions, without fear or favor. They have literally tied their colours to the mast and painted their cars with their political leanings. They are painting rainbows on their cars when we have figures showing that only seven percent of violent crime ends in a prosecution. They have moved from policing crime to policing thoughts and speech, because it is easier.⁹

Journalism: The BBC, that long-trusted bastion of journalistic excellence, has also gone woke. The corporation produced a video called "Understanding Sexual and Gender Identities,"¹⁰ in which it claimed that there were one hundred different genders! Thankfully, after a storm of protest, BBC officials removed the video from their platform. But now they are conducting a "gender census" to find out whether their employees identify as male, female, or "non-binary." Supposedly, this will help them better address "gender-related pay gaps."

In addition, the BBC recently tweeted that it will not tolerate any dissent on transgender issues and that it is willing to inform the police concerning the most egregious "offenders."¹¹ Not surprisingly, that also sparked a large public backlash, with people complaining that the corporation was just wasting taxpayers' money.

The Scottish Government:Finally, in one of the sickest moves yet enacted on British soil, the thoroughly immoral, leftist, devolved, nationalist Scottish government is introducing new legislation allowing children as young as four to undergo "gender transition" without parental consent, as well as mandating schools to include transgender literature in their curricula.¹² Although the move was almost universally described as "risible" and "shocking," even by the mainstream press, there is no effective political opposition to the nationalists' woke agenda that might stop them in their tracks.

Rebels Without a Clue

So, just like the USA, Britain is facing a war with the forces of wokeness that is tearing society apart. Seen in a Christian light, the woke warriors have been given over to a "reprobate mind," as Paul describes it in Romans 1.

But there are welcome signs that at least some Brits are fighting back. Anti-woke TV channels like GB News have been launched, run by a small number of determined and influential journalists who refuse to be silenced by the woke mob. In another positive sign, the British government has summarily dismissed and banned the teaching of Marxist concepts such as critical race theory, intersectionality, and white privilege in UK schools unless a balanced treatment of opposing views is also taught.¹³

But a lot of resistance to this immoral movement is also being fostered in families, through sound parental guidance, as well as through the exercise of the general public's democratic right to air its concerns to local politicians. Though it's probably too late to turn the tide completely, let us hope that more brave souls will join the dissenting ranks to stave off the worst instances of wokeness in the UK.

Notes
1. BBC News (June 8, 2020): bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52954305.
2. BBC News (June 9, 2020): bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52977088; (June 7, 2020): bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52949014.
3. Ibid.
4. BBC News (May 20, 2020): bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-57189928.
5. Independent (Feb. 13, 2017): independent.co.uk/student/news/nine-10-uk-universities-free-speech-restrict-rankings-joseph-rowntree-cardiff-ediburgh-newcastle-oxford-a7577381.html.
6. Daily Mail (May 12, 2021): dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9569835/University-principal-faces-calls-QUIT-allowing-intolerant-cancel-culture.html.
7. Spiked (May 27, 2021): spiked-online.com/2021/05/27/the-woke-drift-of-the-national-trust.
8. Daily Mail (May 11, 2021): dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9565545/Church-artefacts-likely-removed-following-contested-heritage-guidance.html.
9. The Telegraph (Aug. 22, 2021): telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/22/police-pin-hopes-rainbow-cars-drive-hate-crime.
10. Express (Jan. 28, 2021): express.co.uk/news/uk/1390071/bbc-news-defund-twitter-gender-identity-video-transgenderism-public-broadcaster-ont.
11. GB News (Aug. 8, 2021): youtube.com/watch?v=jWSUqxCDYJw.
12. Daily Mail (Aug. 13, 2021): dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9888899/Scotland-let-pupils-aged-FOUR-change-gender.html.
13. The Guardian (Oct. 20, 2020): theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/20/teaching-white-privilege-is-a-fact-breaks-the-law-minister-says.